1. Before commencing to debunk, prepare your equipment. Equipment needed: one armchair.2. Put on the right face. Cultivate a condescending air that suggests that your personal opinions are backed by the full faith and credit of God. Employ vague, subjective, dismissive terms such as 'ridiculous' or "trivial" in a manner that suggests they have the full force of scientific authority.3. Portray science not as an open-ended process of discovery but as a holy war against unruly hordes of quackery- worshipping infidels. Since in war the ends justify the means, you may fudge, stretch or violate the scientific method, or even omit it entirely, in the name of defending the scientific method.4. Keep your arguments as abstract and theoretical as possible. This will "send the message" that accepted theory overrides any actual evidence that might challenge it--and that therefore no such evidence is worth examining.5.Reinforce the popular misconception that certain subjects are inherently unscientific. In other words, deliberately confuse the *process* of science with the *content* of science. (Someone may, of course, object that since science is a universal approach to truth-seeking it must be neutral to subject matter; hence, only the investigative *process* can be scientifically responsible or irresponsible. If that happens, dismiss such objections using a method employed successfully by generations of politicians: simply reassure everyone that "there is no contradiction here!"). By Daniel Drasin – he's is a writer and media producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Friday, May 30, 2008

I like to discuss a conference that brings together a bunch of scientists that are strongly against religion. Now I can see why in a way that is but then again trying to push a so called cult of reason on people as if you don't agree your just deluded. This hits me as ignorant and not allowing other scientists with a different view to elt their voice be heard but that ratherly happens it seems. I went to google and clicked on video their was a 2006 conference that had anthesiologist Stuart Hameroff as a guest speaker after explaining in great detail why neurocomputation can't explain consciousness. He got imploded by a bunch of scientists in the audience mostly materialists one said what he said was a bunch of nonsense.

I also want to comment on a video also in 2006 which also involved the beyond belief conference. They had Physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson talking about what he calls stupid design

his evidence for this is

Earth

Earthquakes and Volcanoes level cities and villagesTsunamis- kill 150,000Floods/Tornadoes/Hurricanes/Lightening StrikesCan't live on 2/3 of its surfaceFreeze and starve on half of what remainsMass extinctions- disease/climate shift/killer asteroids90 percent of all life that ever lived is now extinctInner Solar system is a shooting gallery3.5- billion years to make multi-cellular life.

150,000 babies die per year in the USA from birth defects caused by humans such as alcohol, drugs etc.]

He says yes there are things that are beautiful he says but then you stop looking at things that confound that revelation. Like if i came across a frozen waterfall and struck me for all of its beauty I would then turn over the rock and try to find a millipede or somekind of deadly nute and put then in context and find out that the universe is not here for us.

You drink, eat, breath through the same hole in your body quaranting that some percentage of us will choke to death every year.

Then finally he mentions the sexual organ in men and woman he says no designer or engineer would design that ever.

The video can be found here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgSaTYLYRGI

My opinion on the first and second video

The first video obviously was sadly a failure to try to sway the neurocomputationlists over it sadly didn't work there too stuck in their materialistic worldview.

The second video no intelligent design scientist ignores what he mentions. Some of the stuff especially birth defects can be explained by humans doing the wrong things like drugs etc the designer allows us the have free will but what we do with the earth is up to us.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

The paranormal and science have an uneasy relationship. The occasional scientist is courageous enough to take the plunge into researching the paranormal, but in the main, the subject is anathema. This has led to what could be called a 'paranormal phobia' amongst those who claim to be rational. The world is explained through individualism, atheism, materialism and specialization. The paranormal doesn't fit into any of these, so forget it. : And science does a marvelous job at doing so. Indeed, many scientists become evangelical in their manic need to show that they are right, and paranormalists -well, mad. They've even recruited an army of groupies -non-scientific types who nonetheless have absolute belief in the wrongness of the paranormal. Forming sceptic societies the world over, they do a marvelous job of publicizing paranormalists, even being responsible for some careers. This manic need is interesting.: They doth protest too much, me thinks. And when someone exhibits this kind of fundamentalist mentality, we really must ask if the reason is not 'rationality' based, but an exhibition of fear. If we go into the history of science, it is clear that it grew out of mysticism and philosophy. Even just over 400 hundred years ago, many scientists were of a mystical bent. Think Keplar and Newton. Even in the 19th century, it was a monk -Mendel -who defined genetics. But somewhere along the way, science crossed the line. : It divorced itself from mysticism, and the absolute idea of inquiry it entailed. This seriously reduced the things it could study -namely, the definite physical world, if such a thing actually exists.

At first, they could be comfortable with this, for society was still religious enough to allow science a repository for things they could not explain. Some things could still be the preserve of God. But as god was banished from the universe, it had to change.: And the repository for awkward 'bits' was taken away. And once this occurred, science did something that was the exact opposite of the rational.

Monday, May 26, 2008

It's titled Dr. Steve Novella on Psychic Medium Research Protocols. There is some stuff in this recent podcast I disagree with such as having the skeptics choose people off of craig's list. But then again it's easier too do then trying to get in contact with famous mediums such as John Edwards etc.]

Guest: Dr. Steven Novella from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe discusses his participation in an upcoming psychic medium demonstration. The panel also discusses the protocol used to avoid “cold readings”, and accurately score results.

Cold fusion, the act of producing a nuclear reaction at room temperature, has long been relegated to science fiction after researchers were unable to recreate the experiment that first "discovered" the phenomenon. But a Japanese scientist was supposedly able to start a cold fusion reaction earlier this week, which—if the results are real—could revolutionise the way we gather energy. Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan, demonstrated a low-energy nuclear reaction at Osaka University on Thursday. In front of a live audience, including reporters from six major newspapers and two tv studios, Arata and a co-professor Yue-Chang Zhang, produced excess heat and helium atoms from deuterium gas. Arata used pressure to force deuterium gas into an evacuated cell that contained a palladium and zirconium oxide mix(ZrO2-Pd). Arata said that the mix caused the deuterium's nuclei to fuse, raising the temperature in the cell and keeping the centre of the cell warm for 50 hours. Arata's experiment would mark the first time anyone has witnessed cold fusion since 1989, when Martin Fleishmann and Stanely Pons supposedly observed excess heat during electrolysis of heavy water with palladium electrodes.

When they and other researchers were unable to make it work again, cold fusion became synonymous with bad science. But the method Arata showed was "highly reproducible," according to eye witnesses of the event. If nobody calls this demonstration out as a sham, Arata might have finally found the holy grail of cheap and abundant energy—nuclear power, without its destructive heat.

Marc and Marianne undressed themselves and quickly slipped under the duvet. Although the heating had been on for many hours, it was unusually cold in their normally snug bedroom. Soon they hoped to be as warm as toast and drifting off to sleep after a hard day looking after their boisterous three-year-old son Robert. Seconds later, Marianne was hit on the head by their son’s toy dog. She sat bolt upright in bed with a bemused look in her eyes. The cuddly toy was clearly aimed at her but who - or what - could have thrown it? Moments later another stuffed dog hit her on the head. She hardly saw it move. It seemed to have appeared on the edge of vision a fraction of a second before hitting her. And this time it hit with far greater force and, if she was honest, malevolence. Soon the air was thick with flying toys. All seemed to appear in mid flight, apparently from nowhere, and were hurled with great force at the petrified couple. Marc and Marianne hugged the duvet closer to try and protect themselves from the flying toys. The poltergeist had the same idea. An invisible hand grabbed the far corner of the duvet and pulled in the opposite direction.

Soon they were involved in an ethereal tug-of-war. In such a battle there could be only one victor and the poltergeist was determined to win. But then, just as quickly as it had started, the tugging stopped only to be replaced by something even more sinister. "Marianne, my body feels like its burning," said Marc in a panic-stricken voice. “What’s happening to me?”

The ghostly apparition of a girl is being blamed for a series of crashes on a stretch of country road. Spooky sightings of a girl aged about five, in Victorian dress, on a road in the West Midlands are now being investigated by paranormal researchers. The late-night 'visions' are occurring along Oldnall Road in Halesowen, near Birmingham, and are believed to have been responsible for a number of crashes and near-misses in the area in recent years. David Taylor, chairman of the 'Parasearch' group which has been investigating the claims, said he had not found a rational explanation so far. He added: 'Although the people who have reported the sightings didn't actually crash, they were close to it because they had to swerve around the apparition and up on to the pavement. 'It could be an optical illusion of some sort. 'The area around there is an accident blackspot and there have been some serious incidents, so maybe they had all seen the same thing.' Mr Taylor has been investigating claims of paranormal activity for 22 years. He said: 'Most of the time there is a logical explanation but, so far, I haven't found one for this case.' Resident Jimmy Lahn, 54, said: 'We've had quite a few accidents on that road.

I wouldn't be surprised if this ghostly figure has something to do with it. It is seen as a bit of an accident blackspot around these parts – and maybe now we know why.' A West Midlands Police spokesman said the most recent incidents included a crash involving a motorbike and a car in November while last July a woman was taken to hospital after a collision on the same stretch.

Response From Titus Rivas:The only thing that can be demonstrated by this type of evidence is that there is some brain mechanism involved to facilitate consciousness during our incarnated existence. This does not at all mean the contents of consciousness are themselves caused by the brain mechanism. In other words, the evidence can be perfectly interpreted in terms of the transmitter-receiver hypothesis.

One of the main responses seems to me that there is an interaction of brain and mind, so that the role of the brain does not exclude a separate role of the mind. Anyway, epiphenomenalism is logically untenable as I showed with Hein van Dongen in our Exit Epiphenomenalism: http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/epiphenomenalism.html

Recently Simon Forsyth put up a challenge to Victor and David Thompson http://www.thepsychictimes.com/zammit.htm. Asking him to show evidence that Alan Crossley is the same voice of the person when he was alive. Since then Victor Zammit has written a response where you can find here. http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/dick.htm

So what do I think about this? I think it's sad that Victor has scooped to such as low level.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

An interesting article http://www.montaguekeen.com/articles/montague/chance.htm Montague Keen[deceased] discusses Christopher Moreman's experiment and how he thinks chance coincidence and some form of telepathy could explain the evidence from the cross correspondences. Montague Keen shows why he is wrong.

Personally I would imagine that I'm not the only one to get bored with the same old well known haunted locations to wander around in time after time. Being from the Chicagoland area's S.W. side and during my whole forty plus years of me being only five to fifteen minutes from such locations as Resurrection Cemetery (home of Resurrection Mary), Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, Monk's castle and such, it pretty much becomes the same old thing wandering around the same old locations. I'm sure that feeling is felt by many others pertaining to the areas around where they may live. Sure I know some who keep wandering back to a location like Bachelor's Grove Cemetery and shoot up to 100 photos each time, to try and capture something paranormal with the camera (sometimes you have to squint your eyes real tight to see what they see in the photo), and that is fine for them. I guess I'm lucky that most of the times that I do wander at a paranormal location with camera in hand, I catch paranormal images on my journey out to the location and only shoot about 15 photos, but doing so by using my feelings and abilities to direct me on where to shoot, then after that one time at the location I may never pull a camera out at the location again, and for sure I will not pull one out if I'm taking a group to a location.

So what is one to do about finding new paranormal locations?

I've been lucky in discovering some by being drawn to them, one is Senator John Humphrey House. Also having people tell me about locations that few others know about or the location has not yet hit the paranormal map of places to go and investigate.

But yet each individual reading this may (most likely do have), un-discovered paranormal locations right there in their face every day. The Paranormal Investigators should of been on these type of locations before even reading this article, at least to take their new group team members too, so to practice at and get some hands on experience, as most of these type of locations fit the 'it could be haunted due to' - check list.

They are the ' Road Side Memorials ' dedicated to those who have died due to some type of accident at the location. These are those locations on the side of the road that you pass and they may have a cross set up, flowers, maybe photos of the individual(s), that died at the location or some other type of tribute placed at the spot of sudden death.

One has to remember most of these are fresh spots or locations, so the energy of the departed soul and the accident more then likely still lingers and is fresh. Plus one has to also remember that the emotional energy of those loved ones that set up the memorials dedicated to the love one they lost at the location, may keep the spirit there for awhile.

So just maybe this article will give at least one individual a new location that could be discovered by them, by just going to locations that others just look at and ignore the possibilities that may just be waiting to be discovered.Happy Hauntings,

Saturday, May 10, 2008

BERTHA HARRIS, of Chester, whose portrait, by the kindness of the well-known photographer and friend of the College, Dora Head, we present to our readers in this issue, needs no introduction to College members, for she has visited the College at regular intervals since 1935. I made her acquaintance first at a Spiritualist Conference at Llanberis, in North Wales, and invited her to visit London, where she was practically unknown, although her fine gifts were already fully recognized among Spiritualists in the North of England and in Scotland. She soon became a prime favourite amongst us, securing immediate attention by her pleasant easy personality and by the excellence of her demonstrations both in public and private.

During her London visits she is one of the most acceptable psychics on the Queen's Hall and Spiritualist Community platforms, demonstrating to an audience of many hundreds as easily and convincingly as to a roomful of friends. Her private sittings are arranged at the College, and these are eminently satisfactory to the members and strangers who see, that when she is at the College, she has little free time. While in her public work she seems to be normal, it has been frequently noticed that her frame and features seem to undergo subtle changes and express something more than her usual personality. She claims as her chief "control" an Egyptian, 'Angelõs,' and it may be that there is overshadowing by this 'guide' at certain moments. One reporter in describing her at work, speaks of, "This tall medium with an impelling personality".

In her private sittings a trance condition is more evident. Often "direct control" by a communicator operates. As one sitter wrote, after such an experience, "A dead man, my father, had returned, and was talking to me as intimately as in life." Full names, incidents, intimate things only applicable to the one communicating, sometimes predictions, come in a quick flow which starts almost as soon as the sitter comes into her presence, and her gift has given evidence of survival to thousands. Our critics who have never looked into the matter are not aware of the spate of power, continually flowing through good mediums, and offering evidence of surviving personality. Godfrey Winn in the Daily Mirror for Dec. 1st, 1937, reports a group séance at the College, at which he arrived as a stranger. After receiving a recognized description and message from Bertha Harris, he comments, "Immediately a wall was knocked down between us, because you see, the only person who could want to talk with me from the other side was, as described, savaged by asthma all her life." This from a hard boiled journalist, who goes on to describe the evidence also handed out to others in the same group.

During a visit to Edinburgh, as reported in the Evening Dispatch of March 24th, 1936, by a well-known journalist, Mrs. Harris was asked to visit a haunted house. Her findings on the site were in harmony with long-buried history, quite unknown to her. She is an expert psychometrist and has also made a study of the human aura as a means of detecting personal characteristics, health conditions, etc. She likes to speak on this subject and can express herself clearly and logically when she does so. It is interesting to know that her husband is a good trance-speaker, and at week-ends, when free from business, is often in request by societies in the North.

Bertha Harris seems to be what is called a "natural" medium, that is, one who has always been aware of unseen presences. In an account of her psychic life, which appeared some time ago in the Two Worlds, she speaks of often as a child seeing fairies, or "the little people." Her parents regarded her as an imaginative child and though her "seeing" sometimes got her into trouble they seem to have taken her unusual faculty as a matter of course. At the age of seven she one day declared that she had seen her uncle, believed to be at the time in South Africa, on board a ship; that he had a pretty dolly in his arms, which was thrown into the sea. Shortly afterwards the uncle arrived in England unexpectedly, and it was made known that at the time of her vision his wife had given birth to a child who died, and was buried at sea. The following incident is amusing. She often played chess with her father and often won. When asked how she did it, she said, "Oh, a big hand with finger-ends gone, points, and shows me where to move." It turned out that her great-grandfather, known to her father as a boy, had his finger-ends cut off by a threshing machine. There were no more games of chess.

It was only after the passing of a brother, whom she saw after his death, that she began to connect her visions with the idea of survival, and determined to use her gifts to prove this to others. She has continued to do so with the consciousness of being guarded and helped by spirit friends. "I am often asked", she says, "if my work tires me; people are amazed at the vitality I possess, though I am not naturally strong. The work does not tire me, rather, I feel that as I work and use my gift I become stronger and more energetic; I never experience an ache or pain as a result of my mediumship." And again, "It is a highway of adventure on which I meet with unexpected people and circumstances, my outlook on life is larger and fuller and I am able to deal with my own problems and receive direct help and guidance and rejoice in the life of service and helpfulness to others that has been opened to me."

It is good to meet a sensitive with such robust faith in her gift, and through its right exercise Bertha Harris is able to secure conviction through good evidence, and gives confidence through her personality, to the many who constantly seek her help.

Julie Beischel, who formerly worked with Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona, has opened a new research institute dedicated to exploring the survival of consciousness after death, alternative healing, intuition, and other subjects of interest to people around the world.

It's called the Windbridge Institute, and it boasts an impressive array of scientific advisors.

Here's a experience I had last night when I was dreaming my mother in the dream told me it would be nice if all of the trees in our street were cut down. Here's something strange now this morning I was talking to my mother and she said she said the exact same thing I had in my dream last night. Also crews are cutting down trees right now on my street. Coincidence? perhaps? but after so many experiences I have now realize that explanation is lacking explanatory power.

rAn orbital x-ray telescope has found a chunk of matter in the universe whose existence had long been theorised but evidence for which had been lacking, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday. The discovery made by ESA's XMM-Newton telescope is part of so-called baryonic matter, which comprises less than five percent of the cosmos. Most of the universe consists of matter and energy of an unknown nature, which astrophysicists call "dark" and which is believed to be distributed in a web-like structure. "Dark energy," which causes an accelerated expansion of the universe after the Big Bang that created it, accounts for some 72 percent of the total, and "dark matter" -- heavy particles still waiting to be discovered -- accounts for around 23 percent, according to this theory. That leaves just 4.6 percent to comprise normal, or baryonic, matter, the category for the protons and neutrons that compose it. But only a small part of this stuff has been found. All the stars, galaxies and gas observed in the universe account for less than half of the baryons that should be there. The new claim is based on observation of a pair of distant galaxy clusters called Abell 222 and Abell 223 located 2.3 billion light years from Earth. Images and spectra found the two clusters were linked by a bridge of hot gas of a very low density. The astronomers believe that such low-density gas permeates the filaments of the cosmic web around the universe. They were able to spot this one because of its high temperature and because of a stroke of luck.

The thread was luckily in the telescope's line of sight, rather than visible from a narrower angle. "The hot gas that we see in this bridge or filament is probably the hottest and densest part of the diffuse gas in the cosmic web, which is believed to constitute about half of the baryonic matter in the universe," said lead researcher Norbert Werner of the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

The arlington institute, a non-profit think tank specialising in predictive modelling of future events, hopes to utilise paranormal powers to provide an early warning of impending disasters or other critical events, such as acts of terrorism. British psychic Chris Robinson, who claims to see the future in dreams, is working with the Institute on the project.The arlington institute (TAI), which was founded nearly 20 years ago by futurist John L. Petersen, has identified why previous attempts to harness psychic powers through premonition bureaux were unsuccessful. They were not equipped with a system of processing reports of dreams and predictions automatically, which meant â€œthe ability to effectively analyse the input was severely limited".Present technology, it adds, overcomes these shortcomings. It can also give feedback to those submitting narratives, maintaining their interest in the process. So, for the first time, it has evolved a scheme -called the WHETHEReport -which it describes as an unprecedented early-warning system.The Internet will play a key role. A web portal will be used to collect anonymous "narratives of significant intuitions of all forms, including dreams, visions [and] overwhelming feelings".An announcement of this "revolutionary new global strategic early warning capability" explains: "TAI has constructed a plan for a new, unconventional anticipatory analysis tool which offers humanity an unprecedented potential to anticipate surprise events. WHETHEReport will function as a global sensing and analysis network -using aggregate human intuition as its intelligence source." This plan, it adds, is based on the following assumption: "The ability to image fragments of the future (particularly in dreams) seems to appear both generally in broad populations of people and specifically and more accurately in special individuals.

"Those individuals, it points out, have been used by law enforcement and intelligence communities. It adds: "The most notable perhaps is Christopher Robinson of the UK, who for 15 years worked very successfully for Scotland Yard and other British intelligence and security services anticipating IRA bombings, drug movements, etc.

Friday, May 2, 2008

I am pretty excited I am going to a wrestling event that is at the John Brother's stadium. The wrestlers that will be their are former 2 time wwe woman's champion Jazz, A 7 foot wrestler named Grimez he is the current msw champion msw stands for mainstream wrestling.

This event happens tommorrow night at 7pm tickets are 12 dollars each their will be a meeting at the brick tommorrow afternoon from 2pm-4pm where the fans can meet the wrestlers.

A exorcist was called in to purge a haunted pub after it was claimed a ghost tried to kill a barmaid and her brother. Ghostbuster Ian Lawman, 39, had to take drastic action against the violent poltergeist, believed to be a former landlord at the 230-year-old Crown Inn pub in Farnham Common. Lainie Rutter and her brother, Mitchell, have been living in fear in a small flat at the pub. They struggled to get a night’s sleep after furniture mysteriously moved across the floor, and shelves fell off the wall. The final straw came for pub owner Mike Orme when a fire broke out and a terrified manager refused to live at the Crown Lane local because of the bizarre goings on. Mr Orme, said: “I have been here for about two years and strange things have happened the entire time. A flat on the premises constantly had CD-racks falling from the wall in the middle of the night and when an electrical fire broke out in Mitch’s room, we decided to call on the help of a television programme the ‘Living with the Dead’ to help us deal with the problem.” A seance was ordered by Mr Lawman, a member of the Christian spiritualist church which believes in life after death. Miss Rutter, 20, from Burnham said: “When we called the medium in to conduct the seance, we found out that the spirit was a former landlord of the pub who had tried to commit suicide in the room which is now our flat. “He used really bad language and said that he hated all women and wanted to take Mitch’s body because it was young and strong. “It was always quite nerve-wracking knowing we had a ghost in our flat, but to find out that it was a hostile spirit determined to kill us – that was terrifying.

” Mr Lawman who carried out the seance and exorcism last month, said: “When I got to the room I instantly noticed poltergeist energy, which is always negative. “At first I was going to use the Ouija board, but the spirit became aggressive and hurled a roulette wheel and chips across the room. This obviously spooked everyone and we decided to have a seance instead.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

The last time I died was in Jerusalem in 1276. Pope Gregory X's Crusade against Islam had collapsed and the Christians of the city would soon be abandoned to their fate. My final hours were filled with death. I was besieged in a beautiful vaulted church along with 100 knights. Smokey candlelight glinted off their armour. Some knights were praying, others resting. As dawn broke over the city they readied themselves for the final conflict with an implacable foe. Even the most devout were terrified. All knew that only a handful would survive the coming day. I watched their preparations for battle. The sharpening of swords and lances. The reinforcing of shields and armour. But most of all, I prepared for my own death. As a monk in a city of Muslims, my chances of surviving the coming assault were slim. Soon after the knights left the church, I retreated to a small side chapel to pray. I was desperate for forgiveness. I had travelled from a small monastery in Kent to the Holy Land so that I could kill Muslims. Although I still hated Islam, I found it hard to love my ‘own' side. The decadence and corruption of the Crusaders had sickened me. Now I wanted to be left alone to live in peace. But it was too late. I watched as the flames roared up the sides of the chapel. I hoped it was only purgatory but feared it was hell. Soon I, too, was on fire and burning like a Roman candle. I didn't feel any pain - I knew I was going to die and that my Lord would make it swift. Out of the blackness I could see a burning white light. A calm voice asked me what I had learned from my life and whether there was any knowledge I wished to carry with me to the next.

It was the voice of David Wells, a past-life regression therapist who had put me into a trance and guided me back to my ‘former incarnation'. To many, the idea of reincarnation will seem like bunkum, but it is garnering a surprising degree of respectable scientific support. Today in London sees a major international conference on the subject in memory of the late Dr Ian Stevenson, an American scientist who spent decades studying the discipline.

For the last two weeks now I have been debating with skeptics on a forum called infidels. Here's some of the exchanges I have had with some of them.

kaugust View PostI would like to ask the robust dualists posting here some questions, if they can answer them:

If the mind is something independent of the brain, and is something that is so complex that the brain must "filter" it in some vague sense, then why does performance of complex mental tasks--like doing a math problem, or lying (since lying requires knowing the truth, inventing a lie, and then covering up any evidence of the truth to be consistent with the lie)--require more brain activity than when individuals are not engaged in such tasks? This can be measured with MRIs--in fact, they are being appealed to as lie detectors (currently being reviewed in a particular court case) for their very ability to measure the increased activity of lying.

If mental tasks are something that the immaterial mind can do best when "unconstrained" by the brain, wouldn't complex mental tasks be correlated with less or at least the same amount of brain activity as when such tasks are not being done? In other words, if it is my immaterial mind that does math and lies, why would increasing brain activity assist it? Wouldn't it do better without the brain's "interference" or filtering or "transmission"--i.e., less brain activity? Wouldn't more brain activity constrain it further?

It seems to me that the fact that the more complex the mental task, the more brain activity required, is pretty good evidence that the brain is what does the thinking, and not some immaterial mind. Why does the brain require more glucose or oxygen to burn it the more complex the mental task, unless that processing is being done by the brain itself, and not by the independent mind?

Perhaps a dualist might hold that when the mental task becomes more complicated, the "radio/television" of the brain has to extend its antenna a little more since it can't boost the mind's signal itself, and the increased activity is the tuner trying to get a better picture. Maybe the extra energy the mind puts into answering the math question means it has to lower its normally 50000-watt-signal and so sends a weaker signal to the brain--and the brain must adjust by fine-tuning its receiver, and that fine tuning requires extra brain activity.

But then why the localization--why does this area of the brain light up in mathematical problems, another area light up during creative writing, and so on? And why do more intelligent animals have much more complicated brains than simpler ones? The simpler the brain, the less resources that brain has to "limit" or "filter" or "constrain" the mind--so shouldn't simpler brains be more intelligent, and the most complex brains correlated with lower IQs, since brains merely "suppress" an otherwise unlimited mind?

Why doesn't damage to the visual cortex improve visual processing (assuming the eyes are left in tact), if the brain merely limits the soul's unlimited visual abilities? (As implied if we take out-of-body and near-death experiences at face value.) Why does damage to a specific area of the left hemisphere result in aphasia, a mental deficit, instead of improving an individual's understanding of language? Is it not true that on the transmissive hypothesis, the less brain activity, the better the mental processing? Mental processing, after all, is held to be something that an immaterial soul does, not something a brain does--else it wouldn't be mental processing on dualism. But in fact the opposite has been found to be true. Doesn't all of this make much more sense on the notion that the brain is doing the mental processing--i.e., that mind/consciousness/self/personality/what-have-you are simply simplifying words for specific brain processes?

So I leave it to you: Which is it? Does the brain cause our mental activity or does it merely "suppress" it, as implied by the "transmissive hypothesis"? Ask yourself which seems more likely given the neurophysiological data, putting your presuppositions either for or against dualism aside. If you answer honestly you'll see my point. Answering "But what about out-of-body experiences?" and so on does not answer the question--it simply aims to defuse the evidence by appealing to different evidence. Ignoring such other evidence for the moment, can you honestly say that dualism is just as good an explanation of what we know about mind-brain correlations than the position that mental processes are brain processes?

Incidentally, since it has come up in this thread and Irreducible Mind, I would like to know how robust dualism itself explains supposed instances of Alzheimer's patients regaining their cognitive faculties just before dying. After all, a dying patient still has that pesky brain "constraining" its unlimited abilities. If someone is dying and can still talk, obviously the brain is still "constraining" the mind at that point. It is the other body organs that are failing--the liver, say--at that point. It is only when brain activity ceases or is at least diminished to the point of causing unconsciousness that the "filter" of the brain is no longer holding back the mind--but then the patient cannot move or talk or do any physical activity normally allowed by the brain. (Since the brain is the instrument which allows the soul to control bodily movements, like moving one's lips to talk.) If a dying patient can raise his arm and hold a conversation, clearly the brain is still "filtering" things, is it not?

That's all for now--I just wanted to throw that out for you all to chew on.

Leo

I have posed this challenge as you call it over at Michael Prescott's blog you can read the comments

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/m....html#comments

Originally Posted by kaugust View PostQuote:Originally Posted by LeoM View Post"And the vulnerability of consciousness to anesthetics, to caffeine, and to something as simple as a sharp blow to the head, shows its very close dependence on neural activity in the brain."

Damaging the circuitry of a TV set will impair its ability to display an image, but the TV signal is unaffected.Talk about missing the point, Leo. Consciousness is what is vulnerable to anesthetics and so on. Consciousness is the signal in your analogy. According to your analogy, the TV set could be destroyed and the signal would go on. But consciousness is affected by brain manipulation--it is not unaffected, as a signal is by what one does to a TV set. So why does injecting a person with anesthetics cause consciousness to "go out"? Why isn't it hovering there above the body waiting for the anesthetics to wear off to it can regain control of its "vehicle"?

Ah, yes, that old canard. Yes, correlation isn't always evidence of causation. But it often is. It depends upon the kind of correlation. Just Google "Mill's methods." After all, there is a correlation between smoking and lung cancer sufficiently robust for us to know that smoking causes lung cancer. Or is that "mere correlation"?

You're missing the point again: On your analogy the picture and sound of the TV is human behavior, and the signal is the mental processing. Nothing you do to the TV can affect the signal it receives. Thus on your analogy nothing you do to the brain should affect mental processing, since that is done somewhere other than the brain--in a soul.

So you are forced into a dilemma: either admit that (1) mental processing is done completely by the brain, or (2) partially by the brain and partially by the immaterial mind. The problem with the latter is that once the brain's processing is removed from the equation, the immaterial processing by itself is not enough to make a human mind. Either way, persons cannot think without brains. This conclusion is inescapable given the evidence.

Quote:Originally Posted by LeoM View PostSo if the brain becomes a receiving devise, it could in fact be configured differently in every case to give the temporary illusion of one person being intelligent, another talented musically and the other slow and docileThis would allow people to exist on earth as individuals, these character traits could then be incorporated in to the soul for future reference.Thank you, Leo, for giving me a wonderful analogy on which to base the argument. Consider the difference between a computer which processes a problem locally, and one connected to the internet, the internet being the "signal" and the processing being done on some other computer.

You can degrade that internet connection in any number of ways, affecting the data received. But you cannot affect processing that is done locally on the computer in front of you without affecting the local computer.

On pure production, mental processing is done locally. On transmission/dualism, it is done remotely. On some hybrid like C. D. Broad's compound theory, there is some production on the immaterial side, and some on the material side. The question is whether you can get the full effect of all that combined material and immaterial processing once the physical processing has stopped. And the answer is clearly "no."

The transmissive and production hypotheses can yield different testable predictions, and the analogy of computer A which locally processes information (a brain) connected via a modem connection (a signal) to a computer B which remotely processes information (a soul) can show that there are things that you can do computer A locally which will not affect computer B's remote processing. Such an analogy can intuitively show why tampering with the brain should not affect the mind itself if the mind is remote and the brain is local. And if you hold that the mind is some thing neither the local nor remote processing, like the connection between a local and remote computer, clearly that mind no longer exists once the connection is severed--since the connection by definition requires both computers.

If you mess with the signal between the two computers--between the soul and the brain--you can affect the data that is processed, but not how the machine receiving it processes. If the soul is what thinks, perceives, loves, and what have you, then messing with the brain should not affect thinking, perceiving, loving, or what have you. But it does. Repeated used of crystal meth can turn a compassionate person into an uncaring one. Why is this so, if the soul is what cares, and the brain merely does the soul's bidding like a puppet?But determining if it's productive, permissive, transmissive is the question at hand.

Originally Posted by kaugust View PostQuote:Originally Posted by LeoM View PostI like this sentence by Titus Rivas where he refuts your position that the mind is dependent on the brain.Leo MacDonald being convinced by Titus Rivas, when their positions are nearly identical to begin with? Wow, who would've imagined!

Of course there is more to the argument than merely the mind being influenced by the brain. Of course one object can be influenced by another, so that alone is not going to be a problem with dualism. The problem is how the mind seems to be dramatically altered by brain damage--that shouldn't happen if the mind is independent of the brain. And if the argument were as easily disposed of as you like to pretend, would a prominent philosopher like C. D. Broad, who also happened to be very sympathetic to parapsychology, have conceded that it is a strong argument?

See http://www.ditext.com/broad/mpn12.html

I'll quote Broad below--bolding is mine:

If you want to put your head in the sand and pretend that all is well on dualism, that's your prerogative. But honest researchers have at least admitted that prima facie this sort of evidence strongly undermines the scientific possibility that one's mind could persist absent a brain. Are they all wrong in making this concession? Why would dualists and parapsychologists make such a concession unless honestly looking at the neuroscientific evidence compelled them to do so, considering that it doesn't help their position to concede this point? John Beloff, Douglas Stokes, and Garner Murphy--all parapsychologists sympathetic to dualism and survival--also conceded this. But why?

I would say that their brains are reorganizing synaptic connections wouldn't you? Let me guess--the implication is that their "souls" are doing it, given that their souls are some sort of mini-god capable of making physical changes in some mysterious way. Do you invoke souls to explain why the body heals a cut?

It's odd that none of the people who argue that the brain is so unnecessary for high-functioning thought volunteer for lobotomies to prove their point, isn't it?

I've read Bill Lycan's paper. In fact, I would say he and Frank Dilley are the only people who have even come close to addressing the full force of the neuroscientific evidence against dualism. Odd that in the case of Lycan it takes a materialist to make the dualist's argument for them. Considering that the evidence for mind-brain dependence is the major obstacle to most thinking people taking survival seriously (at least according to John Beloff), one would think that dualists would have addressed it more fully than they have in the past.

My response to this is that any dualism which would allow for the survival of Leo MacDonald after death would have to maintain that most of Leo MacDonald's mentality resides in a soul rather than in a brain. But if that's the case, then most of Leo MacDonald's mentality resides "somewhere else" than his brain, since death destroys his brain (and yet most of Leo MacDonald's mentality supposedly survives this). In that case, most of Leo MacDonald's mentality must be somewhere else, interacting with his brain. The implication is that the brain is merely an instrument for the soul; but just as destroying a drumset has no effect on the drummer playing it, so destroying the brain should have no effect on most of Leo MacDonald's mentality, if any sort of survival-friendly dualism were true. And this is basically what is required of such a dualism: your personality could shed the body like a winter coat, and take on a new body, since mind and body are so independent of each other. But if that were true, we shouldn't see the sort of mind-brain correlations that we do.

In other words, that "that the mind is dependent on the brain for nothing more than sensory experiences as input and volitional executions as output" is not explicitly stated by dualists, but implied given the degree of independence that they typically grant the mind from the body. Supposedly when Leo MacDonald dies he will take his personality and memories and so on with him--except for the fact that long-term memories are formed by strengthening synaptic connections in the brain, and lost as those connections are lost.

Quote:Originally Posted by LeoM View PostAnd the transducer explanation applies here as well. We may even add that cognition may interdepend in a close way with brain activity: There is no reason to suppose that the mind can do complicated reasoning without the aid of a physical calculator; in the real world, most people cannot do complicated reasoning without the aid of a physical calculator.Aye, there's the rub: If so much of the mental processing we do is known to be done "brain-side," and so little of it is left to be potentially done "soul side," then whatever survives death will lack all of that "brain-side" mental processing. But all of the things we know to be done "brain side" are what are distinctive of us: "memories, feelings, behavioral dispositions, and other personality traits" as parapsychologist Douglas Stokes concedes. Subtract that and what is left of Leo MacDonald? Hardly anything at all--certainly not enough to allow most of Leo MacDonald's mentality to survive death.

In other words, if the mind cannot remember, feel emotions, or be disposed to behave in certain ways, or have a personality "without the aid of a physical calculator"--then all of those things must disappear once the brain dies. And what would be left behind, if anything would be, would be some remant of a person, not the person. This supports dualism only in a sense incompatible with survival: It is like lighting a firecracker, inserting it into a watermelon, watching the watermelon explode, and then, upon looking at some red fiber where an entire watermelon used to be, exclaiming "Look! The watermelon survived the firecracker!"

But don't get mad at me; I didn't make the world the way it is--I'm just the messenger.

Incidentally: Why do you think that men and women think differently, and have very different kinds of interests, by and large? (For example, why do girls tend to play with dolls while boys tend to play with toy guns?) Souls are gender-neutral, so men and women should have about equal interests on average, wouldn't you say? But since brains are not gender neutral, being affected by different hormones in different genders, some physical thing is determining their interests for them. But I thought only minds had interests? And minds aren't brains, supposedly.

Hmm and what about people like David D Hoffman that see physicalism is wrong.

Brain specialists, Prof. J.C.Eccles, Sir Cyril Burt, Dr.Wilder Penfield and Prof.W.H.Thorpe stated that in their opinion the brain appears to be more a complicated organism to register and channel consciousness rather than produce it. "The brain is messenger to consciousness", Eccles said. In his famous debate with philosopher Popper "The self and its brain" this matter was examined further.

” The exact type of functional dependence between the brain and consciousness – production or transmission/permission – is the issue at stake.

No dualist denys that the soul will be effected when the brain is damaged. The i thinker will fluctuate from time to time.

Who ever said souls are gender neutral?

There is also the full fledge assault on materialistic views in neuroscience in the book the Irreducible Mind.

I for one think Sir William James was on too something.

Inadequacies of Contempory Mind/Brain Theories

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/con...id=87&pgtype=1

Long Term memories stored in the brain you say? All we have now is neural correlates

Oh boy not good at all it looks like we are in for a major global food crisis just when we thought soaring gas prices were enough.

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.

The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 22% in the past year.

Mr. Coxe said in an interview that this surge would begin to show in the prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid 6.5% more for food in the past year.

Wheat prices alone have risen 92% in the past year, and yesterday closed at US$9.45 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn - the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday - its best finish since June 1996.

This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing.

"You're going to have real problems in countries that are food short, because we're already getting embargoes on food exports from countries, who were trying desperately to sell their stuff before, but now they're embargoing exports," he said, citing Russia and India as examples.

"Those who have food are going to have a big edge."

With 54% of the world's corn supply grown in America's mid-west, the U.S. is one of those countries with an edge.

But Mr. Coxe warned U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about three years if the country continues to subsidize ethanol production. Biofuels are expected to eat up about a third of America's grain harvest in 2007.

The amount of U.S. grain currently stored for following seasons was the lowest on record, relative to consumption, he said.

"You should be there for it fully-hedged by having access to those stocks that benefit from rising food prices."

He said there are about two dozen stocks in the world that are going to redefine the world's food supplies, and "those stocks will have a precious value as we move forward."

Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest of the world.

"That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology," he said.

I am thankyou I live in Canada because there are poor countries that are going to get hit really hard by this.